• What is TechTraction?

    Personal commentary on technology with a sprinkling of tech-tips and how-to articles

How to Remove a Previously Pushed Security Policy from Your Blackberry

Do you have a Blackberry device previously used in a corporate environment? Does this device have certain security settings that you can’t seem to control? Have you tried to completely reinstall the device software and still find that certain security settings remain locked? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you probably have a device that was once loaded with an “IT policy” created by the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) administrator who managed the environment your Blackberry once called home. Of course, you might already know this but what you probably don’t know is how to remove this stubborn “IT policy.” Fortunately, I do believe I found the answer.

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Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips

Connect Your iPod to the Pioneer DEH-P3500 Car Stereo

I’ve been dying for an affordable way to connect my iPod to my car stereo that doesn’t involve the low-fi audio option of an FM transmitter. For the family’s Volkswagon Eurovan a standard “rip-n-replace” was the most affordable option. Fortunately, that approach wasn’t necessary for the family’s second car because all I needed was an inexpensive adapter for my Pioneer DEH-P3500 to achieve the desired results.

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Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips

Friday Find for 07/04/2008: Downloading YouTube Videos

If you’ve ever wanted to “download” a YouTube for whatever reason, then check out this post over at MakeUseOf.com. The post reviews 4 online services to help download a YouTube video. Each service is briefly reviewed and links directly to their respective web sites are also provided.

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Filed under: Friday Finds

Problems with Skype Extension for Firefix 3 Fixed in Latest Hotfix

Back on July 2, 2008 I documented a problem with Google Maps not loading in Firefox 3 caused by the Skype extension. The problem was originally reported to Firefox’s bugzilla problem reporting system but later closed when the problem’s root cause was determined to be the Skype extension and not Firefox. I reported the problem to Skype support and recently received a response in which Skype confimed the problem and provided a link to the latest hotfix.

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Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips

UStream Design Change is Cutting Off Some Show’s Custom Header Image

UStream LogoThe popular free webcasting stream service, UStream, recently made some design changes to their web site. If you have an account, and added your own custom header image to your show page, then take a closer look at your page. Since the update, some header images are getting cut off.

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Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips

Friday Finds for 07/04/2008: Online Virus Scan with VirusTotal

Thinking about uninstalling that bloated virus scanning application but don’t because you still want to scan on occasional file for viruses? Virus Total, an online virus scanning service, might just be what you’re looking for.

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Filed under: Friday Finds

Skype Extension for Firefox 3 Causing Problems with Google Maps

I was trying to get some directions the other day from Google Maps and discovered that the map wouldn’t load. I recently upgraded to Firefox 3, but thought for certain that I had successfully used Google Maps since the upgrade. I did a little digging around and found that I wasn’t the only person experiencing this problem. Question was, “How do I fix this problem?”

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Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips